this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Nuance is needed here... The terms high- and low-functioning are definitely problematic, because they're too reductionist, and lead people to assume things. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that autism having "levels" is bad - the DSM-5 (as horribly flawed as it is) contains two sets of three levels each for determining level of support needed by an autistic person, with the two sets being related to socialization and life-skill functioning. Given that autism is a spectrum, and some autistic people aren't disabled by it at all, being able to categorize people by their needs is useful - we just have to make sure that it's qualitative, rather than arbitrary labels being picked by how the doctor is feeling that day. And it's something to be kept in medical records, not used for self-identification.
I understand this thought process, but us in the schizophrenia community are very familiar with this change. Schizophrenia went from having 3-5 categories based on symptoms to just being the umbrella term for everything. The names for schizophrenia categories aren't particularly negative, but because it's more of a spectrum, categorization of people lead to worse treatment. It locks down an idea of how those symptoms should be treated, and that's the issue.